MOBILE, Ala. -- The U.S. Navy today gave Austal USA a $368.6 million contract for the company's fourth littoral combat ship.

The vessel, scheduled for completion in summer 2014, is the second to be awarded under a 10-ship, $3.8 billion deal that Austal secured in December.

The company has built one LCS and is halfway through with a second. Both of those vessels -- the first named Independence and the second Coronado -- were part of an earlier contract.

Austal officials said they could not comment on the new award under rules of the Australian Stock Exchange, where its parent company, Austal Ltd., is traded.

The December LCS deal was described as a game-changer for the company's Mobile River shipyard. Austal is expected to invest about $160 million upgrading its facility, and increase employment there from 1,800 to about 4,000 over the next few years.

Austal expects to build two littoral combat ships a year through 2015 under the contract, but funding for each ship must be approved on a case-by-case basis.

"This is official good news for Austal," U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions said in a written statement Thursday. "We heard about the initial award before, but this indicates that the final evaluations and negotiations are complete. It is a tribute to the skill and hard work of the Austal employees and their world-class facility."

Littoral combat ships are meant for minesweeping, submarine-hunting, anti-piracy efforts and special forces operations. The small, speedy ships also are meant to be cheap -- at least in relative terms -- allowing the Navy to get from its current 287 ships to a goal of 313.

Yet early in the program, ballooning costs almost derailed the LCS, and the Navy tried to drive down the price tag in a derby where either Austal or a competing team led by Lockheed Martin Corp. would have been eliminated. But each team bid low enough that the Navy decided to buy 10 ships from each.

Lockheed also received funding Thursday for the second ship in its 10-ship deal. The Navy awarded it $376,621,375. Lockheed is building its version of the vessel in Marinette, Wis.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Defense also gave Austal $19.7 million for special studies and analyses of the LCS program. The company is supposed to use the money to assess engineering and production challenges for ship production.

Company officials have said that they cannot comment on that contract, either.